Final night time, a new company called Slate Auto unveiled its first product, a spartan two-seat electrical truck with a mere 150 miles of vary and a world of chance. There’s no paint, no distracting infotainment display screen, and no stereo and even radio. It doesn’t tower over your common 12-year-old, and it might promote for below $20,000 (together with incentives) when it arrives in 2026.
If it arrives, in fact. We don’t must get into the litany of obstacles that lie within the path of Slate’s future success — together with a world commerce battle and a presidential administration overtly hostile to EVs — as a result of as a substitute I’m excited by speaking in regards to the truck as a doable antidote to our rising obsession with overpowered, outsized vans and SUVs.
You’ve in all probability seen this drawback when you’ve got eyes and dwell in America in 2025. Our roads are full of these roving land yachts. Gross sales of SUVs and pickup vans reached new highs in 2024, accounting for 75 p.c of whole automobile registrations. A decade in the past, these two segments made up simply half of the market. In the present day, they characterize three out of each 4 new automobiles offered in America.
These automobiles are greater and heavier than their predecessors. In 2023, 31 p.c of latest vehicles in America weighed over 5,000 kilos (2.27 tons), in comparison with 22 p.c in 2018, in response to a recent investigation by The Economist. And with the shift to electrical automobiles, a lot of these automobiles have develop into even heavier. The Ford F-150 Lightning has a curb weight of round 6,500 kilos, roughly 60 p.c heavier than its gasoline equal.
And as they’ve expanded, rising taller and wider on common than automobiles from earlier a long time, they’ve additionally develop into more deadly to pedestrians and other vulnerable road users. The form of a automobile, particularly the hood, additionally performs a essential function in figuring out whether or not a pedestrian can survive being struck. Autos with hood heights of greater than 40 inches (about 3.3 ft) and blunt entrance ends angled at higher than 65 levels had been 44 p.c extra prone to trigger fatalities, according to the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety.
In the meantime, pedestrian deaths have skyrocketed lately. Between 2013 and 2022, pedestrian fatalities elevated 57 p.c, from 4,779 to 7,522, NHTSA reviews. In 2022, 88 p.c of pedestrian deaths occurred in single-vehicle crashes.
The Slate Truck is virtually diminutive in comparison with most different vans on the street. It’s 69.3 inches tall, 174.6 inches lengthy, and 70.6 inches broad (mirrors included), with a wheelbase of 108.9 inches. Examine that to the 2024 Ford Maverick — usually held up as the kind of compact truck most automakers don’t make anymore — which is 68.7 inches tall, 199.7 inches lengthy, and 83.5 inches broad, with a 121.1-inch wheelbase. Slate even has a nifty visualizer on its website that compares its truck to the Maverick, in addition to the Chevy Silverado EV and — delightfully — the 1985 Toyota SR5 Pickup.
The Slate Truck could are available a smaller package deal, however as Verge contributor Tim Stevens noted in his newsletter, it’s nonetheless designed to do all of the truck stuff truck homeowners love. Its cargo space measures 50 by 60 inches, and it might probably carry 1,433 kilos of payload and tow 1,000 kilos of no matter you’ve acquired. Most truck homeowners have satisfied themselves that they want extra, which is why the 2025 GMC Sierra 1500 affords a most towing capability of as much as 13,300 kilos. However when the common Airstream trailer weighs round 3,000–5,000 kilos, it’s unclear what homeowners are purported to do with all that added towing energy.
Slate’s strategy to know-how can also be refreshingly easy. As a substitute of a large central touchscreen, the corporate contains sprint mounts for a smartphone or pill. Slate affords its personal app, however the whole lot else you want to know is out there on a smaller gauge cluster display screen behind the steering wheel.
The Slate Truck is virtually diminutive in comparison with most different vans on the street
Analysis means that the shift towards touchscreen-based infotainment techniques has accompanied an enormous improve in driver distraction, with a AAA study concluding that drivers utilizing touchscreens had been visually and mentally distracted for greater than 40 seconds when finishing duties like programming navigation or sending a textual content message. Eradicating your eyes from the street even for simply two seconds doubles the danger of a crash.
In fact, this monastic strategy to design helps Slate preserve its prices low, which in flip permits the corporate to promote at rock-bottom costs. When the common new automotive purchaser in America is paying $49,740, which according to Kelley Blue Book is near an all-time excessive, then the thought of a low-cost, bare-bones, micro-truck with an all-electric powertrain (assume decrease upkeep prices, no air pollution) all of the sudden begins to look lots higher than you would possibly assume.
To make sure, Slate faces an uphill battle. All the final caveats about beginning a brand-new automotive firm in America in 2025 apply. Prospects may reject the lo-fi strategy or flip their noses up on the thought of all of the aftermarket customization. Who needs to do all that work? The Trump administration may kill the federal EV tax credit score, which might then nudge the Slate Truck again as much as extra acquainted Maverick territory of round $28,000.
But when it’s a success, and folks begin clamoring for extra inexpensive, smaller, right-size automobiles, then maybe a world not overrun by gigantic, overstuffed, environment-destroying, killing machines is definitely inside attain.